Learning systems have evolved rapidly in the past several years. In the not too distant past, educators relied primarily on chalkboards, papers, and pencils. Since then, educators have increasingly implemented teaching methods including projectors, computers, and even Internet-based materials. The simplest use of the Internet in educational endeavors is the use of the communication features of the Internet to send and receive materials from educators to learners. More advanced uses of the Internet involve educators who have begun posting educational materials on the Internet for access by particular learners (i.e., registered students) or by any member of the public. Some of these Web-based educational materials include interactive features that allow the users to test their recollection of the materials and ask questions of their teachers. A variety of tools and programs can be used or combined to enable this level of functionality.
Still more advanced Internet-based educational systems utilize a combination of technologies that have come to be referred to as learning management systems. The conventional learning management systems allow the educator to organize structured educational materials, which may include audio/visual materials and/or text materials. The structured educational materials are delivered through the learning management system in a manner that tracks the individual users of the system and their performance within the educational materials. Conventional learning management systems require a user to login to the learning management system, present educational content to the user over the Internet, track the user's progress through the educational materials (e.g., text or video presentations), and test the user's comprehension and/or recollection through quizzes and/or tests at one or more stages in the presentation. The learning management system then reports the user's progress and performance on the quizzes and tests for monitoring and reporting. The administrator and/or educators with proper access to the learning management system are then able to have ready-access to information about the progress of the learners. The information provided by the learning management system to the educator may allow the educator to better focus instructional efforts and may allow the educator to revise the educational content delivered by the learning management system.
A primary limitation of conventional learning management systems was the requirement that the learners' performance be monitored through quizzes and tests with a defined question and answer structure. Accordingly, the educator was required to identify the aspects of the educational materials that were most important and to develop appropriate questions to enable evaluation of the learners' understanding, comprehension, and/or recollection of the identified aspects. While this testing approach may be appropriate for some subject matters, there are other subjects for which conventional testing through questions and answers is not a suitable evaluation technique. For example, the inventors have identified that there are a number of disciplines that are psychomotor skill-based rather than understanding-based, or that are at least partially dependent on the development of psychomotor skills. Additionally, the inventors have identified that there is no network-based system for receiving, tracking, measuring, and providing feedback during psychomotor skill performance in a real environment, as opposed to a simulated environment. For example, transcriptionists, whether medical coders, court reporters, or others that are expected to write or type accurately and quickly, must learn and understand certain concepts specific to the particular type of transcription work, but the actual transcription performance is a more important indicator of learning than understanding of these concepts. A test of the underlying concepts will not reveal whether the learner can type or transcribe at a particular speed or accuracy.
The example of a transcriptionist is a plainly apparent example of a learning environment where the learners' skills and performance can be readily input into a computer through, for example, a keyboard. However, a number of computer interface devices may be adapted for use with an Internet-based learning management system. For example, court reporters, captioners, and CART providers often transcribe on stenotype machines having customized keyboards and a language that must be translated to become legible English. Interfaces between the stenotype machines and the computer are generally available to convert the stenographers' keystrokes into legible text on the computer, which is commonly known as real-time transcription or real-time reporting. Similarly, interfaces may be developed between other external devices and a computer to translate external or real actions to corresponding actions in a virtual or simulated world on the computer. For example, a simulated driving exam may allow a user to operate external controls replicating an actual car and the result of the user's actions may be shown on the computer in the form of a virtual cockpit view or an aerial view of the corresponding car movements. The performance of the user in conducting the simulated vehicle is a more accurate evaluation of whether the user understands the relevant traffic laws compared to the traditional multiple choice format exam. Historically, such exams have been in multiple choice format because of the time required to physically monitor the simulated car's performance on the screen and/or because of the time and danger involved in replicating such actual driving exams in the real world.
Conventional learning management systems, including content files and the learning management engines, require the users' performance to be tracked through conventional question-answer based exams or quizzes. Educators can test to greater or lesser degrees of depth and/or breadth through more questions, more difficult questions, and the like. However, current learning management systems are unable to report on performance of a live-action event, such as transcription, translation, driving, etc.
In the exemplary educational context of transcription education, there have conventionally been just two modes of education and practice. Historically, the teachers would read the practice material text to the students at the desired pace and the class of students would begin the transcription practice. The students and/or teachers would then be able to compare their transcripts with the test materials to find errors. Much of the teacher's time was spent reading practice text to the students and reviewing student's transcripts that were substantially correct, such that the teachers had little time to focus on the student's problem areas or ways to improve the student's performance. More recently, the field of transcription education has begun providing prerecorded dictations, whether on cassette or more modern formats such as mp3 files, for the students to listen to while practicing the transcription. However, the student's transcripts were then sent to the teacher for review and comparison with the actual transcript. Again, the teacher's time and efforts were distracted away from actually teaching and helping the students.
In these conventional methods of teaching transcription, the teachers were left with limited time to track student performance in whatever method seemed appropriate for the teachers. There was no uniform or convenient way to recognize patterns of errors among the students or for a particular student. The teacher's efforts reviewing and comparing transcripts often took so much time that the teacher had little time or motivation to do more than flag the mistakes and allow the student to figure out what was going wrong.